An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, 7535/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today, the Nativity of the Theotokos, the birthday of the Mother of God, also commemorates her provision for us in a particular way: This is one of the two feast days of the Wonderworking Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God.

The Kursk Root Icon is one of Russia’s most ancient. Its frame depicts nine prophets who foretold the Incarnation in which the Virgin Mary played a central role. For she gave Christ’s human nature, as he was both fully God and fully man, two natures in one person, unconfused and undivided. 

We have a copy of the icon on our high place above the altar table. Also it is in the icon of our patron St. John by the door, where he is holding it, and in fact he died beneath the icon.

One special thing about how the icon shows the Mother of God’s love for us her people is how it was a kind of spiritual life saver in particular rough periods of Orthodox Christian history. Today is the date of its discovery, when in 1295 it was found at the base of a tree after an invasion by the Tatars. They were a fierce Turkic-Mongol regime that turned Muslim and oppressed Russian Christian culture for centuries while Catholic Crusaders and missionaries pressed in from the West and North.

In this, the discovery of our Lady’s icon, perhaps from some destroyed Church, was a sign of hope. Indeed, the Kursk Root was a more ancient type of icon of the Theotokos known as the Sign, because it presented the conception of Christ in her womb as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah that a virgin would give birth. Besides Isaiah, the other prophets on the icon whose inspired words point to her miraculous role include Moses, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Gideon, Habbakuk, and Solomon.

When first discovered on this date, from beneath the icon when taken from the ground poured forth miraculously a pure life-giving stream, which later was incorporated into a chapel honoring the icon. When Tartars split the icon in two, it miraculously grew together again. It survived an anarchist bombing miraculously. And it was believed to have been a factor in helping to save Russian from invasion by Poland and by Napoleon. It also miraculously kept reappearing at its original humble chapel in the woods. The Kursk Root icon became a sign in more than one way. It also later stood for hope in the face of the largest persecution of Christians in history, under the Bolshevik yoke. And it has visited our little mission in Northern Appalachia three times.

The trials and tribulations of Russian Orthodox Christianity sometimes can remind a student of history and the Bible of the trials and tribulations of the children of Israel detailed in the book of Fourth Kingdoms in the Orthodox Bible. Trials came because of departures from true faith and worth, from corruption and idolatry, but also as in effect tests of faith and strengthening of fate. The results of the latter can be seen how Russian Orthodoxy was carried around the world in the exile diaspora after the Russian Revolution. Our mission is evidence of that.

And in that missionary exile of Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, the Kursk Root Icon played a role as in effect the standard for preserving faith, a kind of symbolic yet real spiritual life preserver. She became the sign of our Lady’s love for her Son’s Church, and the roots of the providence of God including the Theotokos’ role as intercessor, going back all the way to the prophecies of the Old Testament. We are also reminded of this by the figure of the Lord of Hosts at the top of the icon, representing God’s dynamic nature expressed in the uncreated energies of God from the Holy Trinity as a whole. Yet that working out of grace and the provision of God in the worst of troubles is in many ways personified by her care.

The Kursk Root icon has acted as a portal for many believers to that spiritual reality she exemplifies. Consider for a moment how that spiritual reality of her life is expressed in the lestovka, a form of prayer rope increasingly popular among modern Orthodox Chrisians, Lestovka means ladder, and in its 100 steps, 38 are dedicate to the weeks of gestation in the Theotokos’ womb of our Lord and God and savior Jesus Christ. 17 are dedicated to a total count of Old Testament colleagues prophesying his birth by the virgin. Another 33 register his years of earthly life, from his birth to the Virgin to his death and resurrection, all of which she witnessed. So deeply is the Theotokos woven into the Gospel. And the Lestovka prayer rope was true wireless communication, as it the Kursk icon.

The Church understands the Virgin’s life and her birth of Jesus Christ to be fulfillment of the Old Testament tabernacle and ark, in which God was said to dwell among his people. This is an indication too that the Orthodox Church is the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel, not any modern secular government. And this too is because of the Virgin Mary, whose genealogy of course included the line of David.

I’ll close by offering a short selection from St. John of Kronstadt on today’s feast, and the Theotokos’ love for us exemplified by her death and reading: (from https://www.mystagogyresourcecenter.com/2025/09/homily-one-on-nativity-of-theotokos-st.html)

“Nineteen hundred years ago, humanity was elated and exalted by the birth from the righteous yet barren parents, Joachim and Anna, of a wondrous infant – the Virgin, who was destined before the creation of the world to be a marvelous Mother in the flesh of God the Word Himself, the Creator and Savior of the world – the God of spirits and of all flesh. The sorrow of the barren parents, descendants of King David the prophet, who longed for a blessed progeny and suffered reproach from neighbors who had the blessing of offspring, was exceedingly great; yet, within them was a strong faith in the God of Israel – a steadfast hope in His mercy, fervent prayer, unwavering devotion to the God of their forefathers, and an unshakeable expectation of the promise made long ago by God to Israel – the Messiah, the Deliverer of mankind. And their sorrow was soon turned into joy; faith and hope were not put to shame; the complete devotion of Joachim and Anna to God was rewarded with an extraordinary and glorious fruit – the pure Maiden Mary. Even before her birth, the righteous parents made a vow to God to dedicate and consecrate to Him the Child that He would give them; and upon her birth, they immediately fulfilled their vow and brought her to the Temple of God – to be raised for the Lord. 

“The joy of the righteous parents Joachim and Anna was imparted to all true believers, to the entire Christian kin; in particular to the Holy Church, which preserves the treasures of faith with a pure conscience – and loudly and worthy praises all the wonderful works of God’s providence concerning the salvation of mankind. For only she, encompassing with the Holy Spirit all the heights, benefits, and greatness of God’s deeds pertaining to us; while the adulterous and sinful world is completely occupied with its vanity – its worldly cares, its passions, its treasures, its vain amusements, and pays no heed to the gracious and salvific works of God, nor to its true benefit and salvation.

“And so let us all rejoice at the birth of the Most Holy Virgin from the righteous Joachim and Anna, and let us give thanks to the Lord, who has granted us the Most Gracious and Most Wonderful Intercessor of the Christian race, who covers and protects us from sins and from visible and invisible enemies, as well as from great woes and tribulations, when we, with faith and hope, turn to Her.

“Through Her and the God-man Christ, the Son of God, born of Her, heaven, closed by sins, was opened again to the faithful people, paradise, our ancient homeland, was opened again, and we were all given the opportunity to enter it through faith, repentance and virtue, through the grace and generosity and love for mankind of our Savior, who redeemed us from sin, the curse and death. Amen.”

Dear brothers and sisters, as we celebrate the birthday of our Mother in the Church, let us also remember how she always stands to help us. We may like the inhabitants of ancient Israel or Judea feel we are adrift in a corrupt idolatrous culture, but let us keep with her as our intercessor and helper, and cling as to a lifesaver to her Kursk Root Icon.

At the wedding here this afternoon, we’ll be reminded of how she asked her son to change the water into wine at the Wedding of Cana, and Christ did in his first public miracle in the Gospel of John. According to Church Tradition, the bridegroom at that wedding was the Apostle Simon who would become an early apostle to Britain.

That’s a connection directly from her earthly life to the early influence of Orthodox Christianity on the Anglo-American culture in which our mission evangelizes today. 

May we ask the Mother of God on her birthday for a gift, the gift of her prayers to her Son for our mission work in America today. Let us ask her to ask her Son that the everyday water of worldly life in 21^st-century America may be turned into the wine of the blood of Christ that unites us in love in this little country Church as we celebrate her birthday. And let us revere the great treasure of the Russian Church Abroad, the Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God we also celebrate today. Glory to God for all things!

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 7535/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Although we are a mainly English-speaking mission parish in America, there are certain Slavic and Greek words that resonate with special meaning for us.

One is podvig, an ascetic self-sacrifice. Another, phronema, or way of life in Orthodoxy. Then there is sobornost, meaning mystical unity, the full Orthodox sense of catholic. Lesser known but important is govenie, meaning the ascetic weekly preparation for Communion and the spiritual accountability and humility involved. And still another lesser known but important is the word you may not have heard, smirrennomudrie. This means “humility of wisdom.”

And that humility of wisdom, smirrennomudrie, is a part of the Orthodox way of life especially associated with one of the saints whom we commemorate today, the Holy Elder Macarius of Optina Monastery, who reposed on this date in 1860. I.V. Kireyevsky, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox philosopher, became a disciple of Elder Makarius, and helped produce many of the books of the fathers and saints that came out of Optina monastery under the direction of the elder during that period. Their relationship bore fruit because Kireyvsky after a conversation with the elder wrote a long letter to him with many questions that he as an intellectual had about the faith. But his letter crossed in the mail with a letter from the elder answering those questions, even though he had not yet received Krireyvsky’s letter. Clairvoyantly the holy elder seems to have known the questions already. Kireyevsky was persuaded that here was wisdom beyond academic learning.

The Holy Elders of Optina of course are important for our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad tradition, especially to American converts through the influence of their lives and writings on the brotherhood of Blessed Seraphim Rose. But they are important influencers for good on world Orthodoxy as a whole, too. And that in many ways is through their “humility of wisdom.”

Elder Macarius helped encourage this by his emphasis on preserving, renewing, and circulating the writings of earlier Church fathers and saints. He helped to make Optina monastery in the 19^th century a center for such publications and scholarly effort, but not in a Western scholastic way. Always the emphasis was on how we must learn from and through the Church fathers in Orthodox Tradition, guided by the Holy Spirit, not through our own individualistic rationalism, as became the norm in Western religion in modern times.

Humility of wisdom became a basis for keeping Russian Orthodoxy alive, and renewing, in the diaspora after the Revolution, and also in the later flowering of English-language translations of the fathers and saints that we see today in our work in the Orthodox mission to America, glory to God! Elder Maciarius’ emphasis on the humility of wisdom runs against the grain of our modern ethos of using knowledge for self-assertion, comfort, and worldly power, the fruits of which may be seen in AI.

Kireyevsky wrote, “The task of Russian philosophy is not to reject Western thought, but to supplement it with what is revealed in higher spiritual vision—the living experience of ‘higher knowledge’—in which the wholeness of spirit, lost in the Fall and impaired by the triumph of logical thought in Western Christianity, is recovered.”

Let us hear directly the words of Holy Elder Macarius from letters to his spiritual children (these quotations and other information about him here are drawn from the book on the elder published in English by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, in their Optina Elders series: 

He writes: “Acknowledging yourself to be a sinner you must not despair, but humble yourself more and marvel at God’s love for mankind, for He forebears you and awaits your conversion and repentance….  Are you a sinner? Do not despair… Your weapon against the devil is your forebearance…. If you sin every day, then you must repent every day. Have you decayed today because of sin? Renew yourself by repentance….

“Imagine a spark falling into the sea: can it withstand the sea and continue to glow? How small is a spark in contrast to the sea, and how small is sin in contrast to God’s love for mankind! … God’s love for mankind is unlimited.”

“The beginning of all these temptations is pride. A man imagines that he is living piously, not judging his own sinfulness at all, but sometimes even judging others—then the Lord allows the enemy to lay snares for him. Be attentive to your own way of life, check your conscience, and you will always come, however unwillingly, to the conviction that you have not yet fulfilled even one of the Lord’s commandments as a Christian should….

“In order to deliver yourself from these falls, you must acxquire humility. As far as the sinful thoughts at church or while praying at home are concerned, since they are not caused by you, but by the enemy, you don’t have to be troubled. Try not to dwell on these thoughts, but turn to God instead with the prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

“….try to live piously, not judging anyone, loving all. In all worldly conflicts, blame yourself and try to forgive he other. If someone offens you in something, then think that God has allowed it in order to test your Christian patience. Think more often of the greatness of God and your own wretched nothingness. Be attentive to your own doings, and not allow yourself thoughts of your own worth, like the Pharisee, but repeat more often the prayer of the Publican. Read spiritual books, and subscribe to spiritual magazines, this will keep you occupied, and will strengthen you in spiritual activity.”

St. Macarius’ letters are peppered with parallels to writings of the saints and of Holy Scripture, in keeping with his grace-filled virtue of “humility of wisdom.”

The antidote for artificial intelligence lies in smirennomudrie, humility of wisdom, in Holy Orthodox Tradition. For in Orthodox Christianity, intelligence is personal and an expression of grace–and wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge are four of the great biblical seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are not designed to self-medicate us into passiveness, but rather to arouse us into what Dostoevsky called active love, as the Gospel reading today calls us to do, in Christ.

Brothers and sisters, may our intelligence not be artificial, but personal, graceful, expressive of love, supernaturally natural in Christ– in short smirennomudrie, humility of wisdom, as shown to us by our father among the saints Elder Macarius of Optina and his legacy. Glory to God for all things!

Proclaiming the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ
St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church, September 7535/2026 Newsletter

New Year’s Resolution

Dearest to Christ,

As we enter the new year 7535 in Orthodox Christian reckoning (based on the Bible from the Byzantine era), two photos sum up aspects of our past Church year at a glance. One (above) is a picture of an immature red-tailed hawk perched on the Slavic Cross on our recently installed Onion Dome, taken by Longinus. The hawk can be taken as a local symbol here in Penns Woods of the soaring vision gifted us by the Holy Spirit, God willing, and in our Orthodox Church Tradition including Holy Scripture. The Cross indicates the need for our continued humble and repentant struggle as we enter a new year’s cycle of worship on the Church calendar. Lord have mercy!

The second photo (below) is from our showing of the film Moses the Black at the Campus Theatre last week, as part of our outreach activities to the community, glory to God! It is a reminder of those outreach activities in local downtowns and to our area university students and in our prison ministry as well as of course regularly in our services and coffee-hour education programs, but also of the whole primary orientation of our parish as a mission with God’s help. It likewise reminds us of the needs of sacrifice, most of all in the challenges of spiritual warfare daily, but also of time and when possible financial support, in the work of each and all of us as missionaries for the Orthodox Gospel. May the Lord give us good strength!

“New Year’s resolution” often means something on our “to do” list for the new year. But “New Year’s resolution” can also mean a quality of character that in Orthodoxy we understand ultimately to be God-given: A state of openness to faith and service, reflecting the Biblical virtue of might or courage, perseverance–resoluteness. May God grant us such resolution in our mission work in following our Lord’s New Commandment in 7535, to love one another as He loved us.

Looking forward to this month, you’ll see below upcoming events: Most of all our regular services, a major feast, and the visit of a Bishop for our fall feast, as well as our annual meeting, the baptism of a new arrival, and the wedding of our Warden to a new member of our parish. Glory to God for all things!

Asking for your prayers.

Father Paul the unworthy Rector

***

Please note: On the Church calendar, September and our New Year start on the civil (secular) calendar’s  Sept. 14, when our monthly newsletter appears. Dates are listed below by the Church calendar/slash/civil calendar.

Regular Schedule

Vigil 4:30 p.m. Saturdays, Divine Liturgy 10 a.m. Sundays (Prayers of the Hours 9:40)

Akathist Wednesdays 7 p.m.

Confessions at Vigil or by appointment

Online Orthodoxy Saturdays 10 a.m.-11 (please email Fr Paul for the link, priestpauls@pm.me), except 9/19

Community Bible Study, 2:30 p.m. Sundays (though not Sept. 7/20)

Prison Ministry Mondays.

Please check stjohnthewonderworker.com calendar to confirm.

Special Feasts and Events

Baptism of the Infant Anthony, Sunday Sept. 7/20, 8 a.m. (before Liturgy).

Nativity of the Theotokos: Vigil 6:30 p.m. on Sunday Sept. 3/20, and Divine Liturgy on Monday Sept. 8/21

Wedding of Nicholas and Sophia: 2 p.m. Monday Sept. 8/21.

Annual Parish Meeting (Members only): After Liturgy on Sunday Sept. 21/Oct. 4. Elections and reports, planning for the year ahead.

Fall Feast and Bishop’s visit. The Feast of the uncovering of the relics of St. John will be commemorated at Vigil on Sunday Sept. 29/Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. and at Divine Liturgy on Sept. 30/Oct. 12 at 10 a.m. (Prayers of the Hours at 9:40 a.m.)  Bishop Luke is scheduled to visit us, and plans to engage at meals with discussion with members, catechumens, newcomers, and inquirers, in instruction on Orthodox Christianity. This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the faith from an Orthodox hierarch and educator (Bishop Luke is also Rector of Holy Trinity Seminary). All laity and inquirers welcome!

Financial Support and Planning

A reminder that we aspirationally tithe at St. John’s, and we may be requesting voluntary private pledges for 2027 at the Annual Meeting to help with budget planning. We also hope to begin a public fundraising campaign for a new permanent iconostasis (designed by architect Andrew Gould) soon.

In addition, please note that in order to keep our budget planning on track, we are asking that any projects related to the Church or property first be routed to Fr Paul as Rector, and then as needed he will route them to the Parish Council for review. Any project, large or small, should first be reviewed, even if a donation of time and money, to determine its possible impact on the larger budget and also its appropriateness for the site. Thank you for all of everyone’s help with donations of time, money, other gifts, and most of all prayer!

Many thanks to our Treasurer Vince for all his work in keeping track of our budget!

Please Pray for our Catechumens

Corey, Noah, Charles, Laura, Ty, James, Wyatt, Aaron

Diocesan Assembly

Our Diocesan Assembly will be held Oct. 9-11/Oct. 22-24 in Nyack, NY (main day of business on Thurs. Oct. 10/23). We’re looking for a lay delegate who could be at the Assembly with Fr. Paul. Please be in touch with him if you are interested. This is a good way to get to know the governance aspects of our Diocese and its part in the larger Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and highlights the conciliar as well as the hierarchical aspects of our Lord’s Church.

Prison Ministry

Fr Paul continues to visit the prison regularly (usually each week) for two classes that each include prayers. On the New Year (Sept. 1/14 he made a new catechumen, Elizabeth). Please pray for our Orthodox Christian inmates Tatiana, and Tanya, and for the catechumen Elizabeth, and for Letitia and Crystal who are also in the catechumen class (we have about a dozen others who attend the large-group class regularly too). We have a couple other parish members getting involved as well as a couple interested students. Please contact Fr. Paul if you would like to participate as a volunteer also.

Brotherhood of St. Alfred the Great

Many thanks to Longinus for all his work on cutting the lawn, which has helped our budget a lot. In addition, he has helped to spearhead efforts to clean up the “front lawn” at the doors to the Church. A contractor during the building made a mistake and dumped gravel and coal dust in what was supposed to be a couple small patches of grass lawn. Longinus has been donating his time and equipment to beautifying the space in time for the upcoming wedding. The brotherhood has discussed a field trip this fall to Holy Protection Monastery and perhaps later in the new Church year to Holy Cross Monastery in West Virginia and to Jordanville. Thanks also to Nik and others for help with work around the building.

Sisterhood of St. Olga of Alaska

Matushka Olga has been assisting with plantings in front of the Church. She and Viktoria also have been helping with Church cleaning. The Sisterhood plans to work on helping to coordinate future coffee hours and also perhaps to have a lunch this fall.

Campus Ministry

Many thanks to Eleni for helping to promote services and events to students at Bucknell, and to Lizzy for her work at Susquehanna. Please pray for our students Eleni, Lizzy, Verna, Maia, and others. Upcoming films this fall will be on campus at Bucknell (see note above).

Ministry to Sick and Shut-Ins

This continues with regular visits to Mary and Innocent, and to others as needed who are in hospitals are sick at home. If you would like to help as a visitor, please be in touch with Fr. Paul. Thanks for Justin in helping with this ministry greatly!

Film Series Continues Later This Fall

Please mark your calendars for the final (fourth and fifth) film showings in the Susquehanna Valley Orthodox Christian Film Festival hosted by St. John’s and the Bucknell University Orthodox Fellowship. Films are free, and will be followed by brief discussion. Invite a friend, inquirer, relative, co-worker to these outreach mission events.

Tuesday, October 7/20, 7 p.m. Bucknell campus: Elaine Langone Student Center Forum. Andrei Rublev.

Tuesday, November 4/17, 7 p.m. Bucknell campus. Elaine Langone Student Center Forum. Man of God.

Reminders: On Preparing for Communion and Appropriate Dress

Please remember that appropriate preparation for Communion includes following fasting rules, saying preparation prayers, and attending Vigil the night before (especially Vespers). Fasting includes following regular fasting rules for Wednesday, Friday, and any special fasting periods, as well as a total fast beginning at midnight the night before Communion, and from marital relations the day before. Confession should be heard at least during each of the four major fasting periods of the Church year, and before Communion (at Vigil or by appointment) if any deed or passion presents an obstacle to receiving Communion with a clear conscience, as otherwise it may be spiritually harmful. (Confession is always completely confidential.)  If you are unable to attend Vigil or at least Vespers, please say Reader Vespers at home and come to Liturgy early for a blessing from Fr. Paul to receive. https://www.saintjonah.org/services/vespers.htm Appropriate dress includes long pants and long-sleeve shirts for men, long dresses or skirts with shoulders covered and head scarves for women. Appropriate apparel is not to be legalistic but to support a spirit of humility and obedience before God for the community as a whole, as does the dress of your unworthy Priest. The whole tradition of preparation for Communion, called govenie, is to highlight our struggle with God’s grace to be accountable and repentant in approaching the Body and Blood of our Lord, in effect supping with Him in the greatest “feast” possible, of His Resurrection. Glory to God!

Our Diocesan Bishops have issued a statement that parishioners should receive confession from their parish priest who also should be their spiritual father for seeking counsel and prayer. With his blessing, you may also seek spiritual help from monastic elders and others, but this is to strengthen the Church family of the parish, where we all seek to support each other for salvation.

If you will be attending another Church on travels or pilgrimage, please ask Fr. Paul in advance for a blessing, so that you can then contact the Priest in advance to let him know you have been blessed to receive by your spiritual father, and ask for his blessing to do so.

Please be in touch

Feel free to contact Father Paul by phone or text, 570-863-9039, or at priestpauls@pm.me

St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church, 92 St. John’s Lane, Winfield PA
Post Office Box 155, Winfield PA 17889
stjohnthewonderworker.com

Asking for your prayers!

Today’s Gospel Readings and commemorations of Saints Peter and Febronia remind us of the importance of love and fidelity and how they relate. Fidelity of course involves faith. The Apostle Paul laid out what have been called the three Christian virtues when he said faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love (I Cor. 13). The three, culminating in love, interconnect. Faith helps provide the basis for the natural supernatural power of love, as does hope. Marriage as a mystery of the Church, between a man and a woman and also symbolizing the unity of Christ and His Church, combines the Christian virtues in the mystical union (or sobornost) we know in the body of Christ as family for our salvation.

The tradition of Saints Peter and Febronia, special patrons of faithful and hopeful love, illustrates this mystical unity at the heart of Church. It is based in the ancient Russian city of Murom, home to many saints, old monasteries, and warrior-heroes of old Russia. Peter and Febronia became among the most celebrated, and post-communist Russia has a massive summer national holiday honoring family, love and fidelity that is dedicated to them. It is Russia’s answer to the celebration of the sin of Pride and sexual immorality and perversity in Western countries for a month around that same time of year, and we too honor these saints not out of conflict with others but, starting with ourselves, to show the righteous healing power of faith, hope, and love.

Today’s feast for those saints falls on the Sunday before the sixth day of September on the Church calendar and honors the translation of the relics of the two saints. According to tradition they were buried on the same day in 1228, and their bodies miraculously appeared together twice in a single tomb after twice being buried separately. But then in the last century under Communism their relics were treated with blasphemous ridicule in a museum. Thankfully the relics of the saints were transferred to the Holy Trinity Convent in Murom, Russia, in 1992, after the fall of atheistic Communism in Russia, to restore their public veneration.

In 2012 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church established this September-based feast marking that restoration of the relics, so that weddings also could occur on a feast of Saints Peter and Febronia, since the summer feast and the national holiday on the day of their repose falls during the Apostles Fast when weddings cannot be held. Here in our little country church in America, this year by meaningful coincidence we are hosting a special wedding for our parish in a little more than a week, appropriately. Adding to the meaning of today’s feast this year, today is New Years Eve on the Orthodox Christian calendar. Today is a day for resolutions, among which we can include resolutions about family, love, and fidelity, related to Saints Peter and Febronia, asking their intercession for our new year’s resolve.

It is well known that the Old Testament equates adultery with apostasy and idolatry, schism and heresy, and this is deepened spiritually in the New Testament. The traditions about Saints Peter and Febronia underscore the relation between personal fidelity or chastity and spiritual faithfulness. A traditional account of the saints’ lives goes like this (from: https://www.pravmir.com/life-of-the-saints-peter-and-Febronia-of-murom/):

Murom back in the Middle Ages was ruled by a good prince Paul. The devil sent a serpent that seduced and debased his wife in a case of demonic possession. The prince told her to trick the serpent into telling her how he is destined to die.  And when the serpent came, when it began to brag, she asked humbly and with respect: “You certainly know everything, and so you must certainly know to what kind of death you are destined.” And the great deceiver was himself deceived by the faithful wife and unknowingly betrayed his secret, saying “My death will come from Peter’s hand and Agric’s sword.” 

Peter was her husband’s brother, whom they asked for help. But they did not know Agric’s sword. Peter praying alone in Church one day was approached by a youth who asked if he would like to see Agric’s sword. He showed a niche in the bricks of the altar where the sword lay. Prince Peter took the sword and began to wait for an opportunity to slay the serpent. One day he spoke with his brother Paul and then shortly afterward saw Paul impossibly again elsewhere with Paul’s wife the princess. He realized the second Paul was a deception of the evil spirit to avoid being slain. He struck it with the sword, and the evil spirit returned to its true form and died in convulsions. Before it died, however, its blood spilled on Prince Peter, who became covered with sores and ulcers from this blood, and gravely ill.  Having heard that there were many physicians in the region of Riazan, Prince Peter told his servants to convey him there in his weakened state. 

One of the young men of his retinue there accidentally met in a village a beautiful maiden, Febronia, known for her wisdom, although of modest background. She said she could cure the prince if he proved kind of heart and not proud. Prince Peter offered the maiden great wealth for curing him, but she said she did not want worldly riches, but only to marry him. Peter agreed while not taking her seriously because of her low birth. She prepared an ointment for his healing. He was cured except in one place that she had ordered be left uncovered, where there was still a scab. He tried giving her great gifts and then left, but the rash returned from the remaining scab. He had to return to Febronia again for healing. She said she would only fully treat him if he became her wife, and this time he agreed sincerely. He then was wholly healed under her care.

They married and after Prince Paul’s death Prince Peter became ruler of Murom. He and Febronia lived very pious lives, closely obeying the commandments of God, and doing great works of charity among the common people, which Febronia led. But this aroused jealousy among the nobles. They tried to force Prince Peter to give up the commoner Febronia, but he would not do so, citing Jesus’ commandment on marriage. So they were exiled and sent down river by boat from the city. But the royal and pious husband and wife kept their faith that God would care for them even so.

A married courtier helping to oversee their exile sinfully was attracted to Febronia. She ordered the lustful courtier to scoop up water from the river one side of the boat and drink it, and then from the other side. Then Febronia approached him, and asked: “Tell me, did you find that the water tastes the same on both sides of the ship, or was it perhaps sweeter on one side than on the other?” The man answered: “No, my lady. The water tasted the same on both sides.” Then she replied: “And so is the nature of all women. Why then do you want to leave your wife and think about another woman?” The courtier then realized that the princess possessed the gift of reading the minds of men. Becoming afraid, he gave up his evil intentions.

It was not long before a party from the city overtook them as they were camping in the wilds. A lord from the city told them that it had been decimated after their departure by feuds among the nobles seeking to take power, and that many of them and their wives who had forced the exile were dead. “Those lords who have survived and all the rest of the people beg you to come back, my lord, and rule over us. And we will neither anger nor irritate you again…. Those of us who remain alive do love [Febronia], and we beg you not to leave us alone, your humble servants.”

Thus, Prince Peter and Princess Febronia returned to the city of Murom, and they ruled according to the commandments of God. Peter and Febronia always helped their people with alms and prayers. They treated all as if they were their own children. They loved everyone equally, and disliked only those who were proud or who exploited the people. Peter and Febronia lay up their treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. They were real pastors of their city. They always ruled with truth and humility, and never with anger. They gave shelter to pilgrims, fed the hungry, and clothed the naked. And they helped the poor in their misfortune.

When death was nearing, Peter and Febronia prayed to God that they both might die in the same hour. And they requested that they be buried in the same tomb and in a common coffin in which their bodies would be separated only by a partition. And as many pious elderly Orthodox Christians have done throughout history, together they took monastic vows, Prince Peter becoming Brother David, and Princess Febronia, Sister Euphrosinia. Shortly before death, Princess Febronia was embroidering a cover for the chalice of the cathedral. And a messenger came from Prince Peter, now Brother David, saying: “Sister Euphrosinia, I am ready to die, and wait only for you, so that we may die together.” But she asked him to wait until she finished embroidering, but as he neared death, she put it aside and they died together. 

Some of the people insisted that they should be buried separately since they had taken monastic vows. But when this was done, the next morning the people went to the caskets of Peter and Febronia and found them empty. The bodies of the holy prince and princess were found together in the tomb that earlier they had ordered prepared to share. The people, not understanding, once more placed the bodies in separate caskets. On the following day the bodies of Prince Peter and Princess Febronia were once again found together in the tomb. Since that time no man has dared to disturb their holy bodies until the Communists disparaged them but today the relics again are honored, as we do in our little Church today. And whoever touches with contrition the tomb wherein lie the holy relics of Peter and Febronia always received comfort and healing.

Brothers and sisters, faith, hope, and love are not a legal checklist. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit through Christ. Let us open our hearts to their grace, that the spark of God’s love in our heart may fan them with His uncreated energies, so that we may lose ourselves in our love for Him, and through Him with one another help brighten the land. Let us have holy righteous Prince Peter and Febronia be our models and intercessors. May they pray for us in the new year to hold this resolution firm, to live with faith, hope, and most of all love, as they did, in Christ. Glory to God for all things!

An homily for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Often for events with students at the university I’m asked whether “business casual” or some other clothes are required. But clearly according to our Gospel reading today there is an appropriate attire for our lives, spiritually speaking. This is because for us as Orthodox Christians, we are heading for a celebration of the marriage of the Bride and the Lamb, and the Bride is the Church, in which we hopefully are participating with all our heart. Indeed, in every Liturgy, the Eucharist is a fulfillment of Orthodox weddings, the ultimate wedding, of Christ and His Church. And how we bear ourselves to weddings is important. It bespeaks the need for proper attire of our lives as surely as the wedding banquet in the parable.

We prepare for communion through fasting, confession, prayers, and humble decorum and attire in Church. This is especially emphasized in Russian Orthodox and Greek Athonite monastic traditions, though not exclusively. The govenie of this preparation throughout the week involves accountability and ascetic struggle, and seeking through God’s grace humble obedience to Him.

But the parable by Jesus we hear in the Gospel also offers a type or shadow of things to come in our lives, the particular judgment we will face after death, also known as the tollhouses metaphorically, as well as the Final Judgement. Proper attire there is everything too in a spiritual sense, and includes for our salvation receiving the Eucharist regularly with all the framework for our lives that involves.

For in the Final Judgment our wedding in the Church to the Lamb, Christ, will be either spiritually consummated or called off abruptly, depending on how we have learned to love and live while here on earth, and the prayers of those helping us, with God’s grace. Our Most Holy Theotokos did not have to go through this and thus she intercedes for us, as we know from Dormition season just passed.

In the book of Revelation the garments of the faithful praising the Lamb at the end times are white from virgin purity, and this purity of attire symbolizes the deepest and broadest sense of emptying one’s life in Christ in our marriage to Him, instead of asserting ourselves. The clothing or attire symbolizes something more, a willingness to empty ourselves in Him, to lose ourselves in Him, and to find ourselves in Him.

A wise elder priest told me that when we are drowning and thrown a rope, maybe we will still be thinking of our to-do list: I have this project or that email to deal with, or I really need to be at work, et cetera. But really we are in a storming flood and a rope has been thrown to us to save us. Do we reject the rope because we are busy and can handle things ourselves by dogpaddling, or do we focus on grasping the rope and climbing up to help those who are trying to pull us up? This is a parable too of God’s grace and help for us, and our own resistance. This is like our death, when the lid on the coffin is lowered. We’ll want and need that rope, that grace from God.

Meanwhile the people in the parable invited to the wedding, as if to the Eucharist, did not see it for their salvation. As the old Americna hymn puts it, they said, “I cannot come to the wedding, don’t bother me now, I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow, I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty a sum, don’t bother me now I cannot come.” How familiar this is for all of us, about why we can’t come to worship services, to major feasts of the Church calendar, or even to find premium time or any time to pray in home either individually or as families. 

But the devil makes it seem silly when it is all very serious, insidious, because at the end of our lives all that neglect, apathy, and distraction, screen time instead of prayer time, delusional pleasures instead of real love for others, all comes from a bad place, either of our own fallenness or the demonic. It will work against us as we face the demons of the tollhouses in the 40 days after death, and presumably also the final judgement, in the tradition of the Church. What will save us through God’s grace will be our attentiveness, what Jesus calls our watching, our getting our mind into our heart, to experience His love. How do we do this? Through the Jesus prayer, the praying without ceasing, and the worship services of the Church, and our own prayer and fasting in our daily lives at home and at work and in the community. Let us help the poor, the sick, the shut-in, the prisoners, and let us save souls for Christ, if we wish to enjoy the wedding banquet with our King. We do this not just for a crown, because the crown also on earth is a crown of martyrdom, but because this is the Way through Christ of a meaningful life, a life in which we find our self in Him, and help ourselves and others to find the Kingdom of God.

For that of course is the true meaning of marriage in the Church, helping each other find salvation. How important is that symbolism of marriage. Soon comes the last highlighted feast of the old Church year, the Beheading of John the Baptist: which was about a marriage. The book of the Bible called the Song of Songs is about the marriage of God and His Church. It’s how things end in the Book of Revelation, with a wedding. And we step up as to be wed to the Eucharist in Church today as well, just as we will participate in our prayers and love at the Dance of Isaiah in the wedding of Nicholas and Sofia coming up in two weeks here.

St. John Chrysostom in his commentary on this parable pointed out the destruction historically that came to the Jews who rejected our Lord, who would not come to the wedding in effect. St. John wrote, “not straightway after Christ was slain did the capture take place, but after forty years, that He might show His long suffering, when they had slain Stephen, when they had put James to death, when they had spitefully entreated the apostles. Do you see the truth of the event, and its quickness? For while John was yet living, and many other of them that were with Christ, these things came to pass, and they that had heard these words were witnesses of the events.

The Chrysostom continues, “And wherefore is it called a marriage? One may say. That you might learn God’s tender care, His yearning towards us, the cheerfulness of the state of things, that there is nothing sorrowful there, nor sad, but all things are full of spiritual joy. Therefore also John calls Him a bridegroom, therefore Paul again says, For I have espoused you to one husband; 2 Corinthians 11:2 and, This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Ephesians 5:32.”

The Jews who rejected Jesus were those first invited to the wedding who rejected it and end in spiritual ruin and in the devastation of Jerusalem in AD 70, scattered in diaspora, many of them continuing their hostility against the rising movement of Christians. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were richly attired, but what Jesus spoke of in the parable is attire of the heart really.

Matthew 25 calls on us to help the poor who may be in tattered clothes, because by helping them we are helping in effect Christ, in Whom we all are made. A priest in another jurisdiction who liked to wear Roman collars and black sport coasts in Catholic style, 20 years ago commented to me that he really disliked seeing Russian Orthodox priests around because of their long beards and long hair and wearing robe-y riassas and sandals. Well, we’re still here, and it’s the authenticity of the attire from the heart that counts, however sinful I/we may be indeed.  In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us to take no thought for what we will wear. As another old American hymn puts it, “Consider the lilies how fair they grow, clad in a glory that kings never know.” We saw that at the flower feast of the Dormition recently, that expression of natural beauty that is supernatural in the falling-asleep and resurrection of our Lady and intercessor in heaven the Theotokos. 

It is true there is appropriate and respectful attire for a family wedding, and in Church Tradition for worship, and for clergy, as well. But dressing rightly for Church should come without self-righteousness. For us priests that means wearing our black robes all the time as a sign of humility and not bending in accord with fashion, not trying to look like so-called normal Americans as my other priest friend apparently wanted, and wearing a reminder that we should behave. What is the difference between legalism and righteousness or justice in Orthodox practices such as clothing? Remember that logos has principle or rule as a synonym but also harmony. So to be in accord with God’s law is to be in accord with the harmony of God’s love.

That is the wedding of Christ, the banquet to which we are invited at the Eucharist. If we would dress appropriately for the White House or Buckingham Palace or dinner with a billionaire wanting to hire us, let’s dress humbly for Church and cover ourselves modestly. What can be a cause of pride should be a cause of right behavior and modesty. For a priest in Russian Orthodoxy we are required to wear a Cross on our chest always, and it is a sign in time of emergency of how we are here to help, but also in times of persecution, it is to focus it on ourselves and not others. Lord have mercy on me a sinner!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us as we are called to the wedding celebration, in the Eucharist today of our wedding as a Church with our Lord Jesus Christ, of Nick and Sofia in a couple weeks that will highlight in that mystery of the Church the commitment of husband and wife to both Christ and one another, and to the great wedding banquet to which we are called at the end of time, let us be appropriately attired in our hearts and in our expression before one another of humility and obedience to the Bridegroom, the Lamb of God, realizing that Christianity is always a team sport, whether we are a monastic hermit in the desert with angels or in the world with our parish family or at a Church wedding. May the Lord bless our union with Him and one another in the Body of Christ, and may we be watchful in tending our hearts to be ready for the true moveable feast, the great wedding feast, that is Orthodox Christianity. Glory to God for all things!

This is from a talk given by Priest Paul Siewers of St. John’s in Winfield PA at the Pennsylvania Association of Prison Chaplains, on a panel also featuring Priest Ignatius Hunter of Holy Trinity in State College and Subdeacon Herman Always of Holy Cross in Williamsport. Picture above “Dostoevsky in Prison” is by the late Russian artist Helium Mikhailovich Korzhev

Hello, I am Father Paul Siewers, an American Russian Orthodox priest and parish rector, and also a tenured professor of literature at Bucknell University, where I am campus Orthodox Christian chaplain. I also am a volunteer priest chaplain at Muncy SCI.

Dealing with Orthodoxy Christianity means dealing with something often strangely familiar but quite different, which sometimes makes it tricky across different faiths. It is said we are Orthodox but not Jewish, Catholic but not Roman, and evangelical but not Protestant.

Here are three things to remember in understanding, for those working with inmates in the prison system, why Orthodoxy is not just simply a kind of twin sister of Catholicism as is sometimes mistakenly thought by some Americans: 

1. Orthodox Christianity in modern terms is non-Western.

2. Plus, it comes to America with cultures and traditions that suffered under various forms of severe oppression especially in the last century under Communism. For example, our US state with the highest proportion of Orthodox Christians is Alaska because of its Indigenous adherents, but they suffered under Western missionary efforts in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

3. Orthodoxy’s formational culture lies in what we would call Byzantine civilization, which itself is something uniquely different from Western European and Anglo-American and Roman Catholic traditions. We didn’t have the same periods of Renaissance, Enlightenment, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and we’re ok witht hat. There is a whole wealth of Greek and Syrian and Slavic Church Fathers across centuries. That said, we revere and read our Bible both literally and symbolically in light of ancient Church Tradition and the Church Fathers and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

All three points mean that Orthodox in an American institutional settings is best treated with the kind of culture care with which Islam, Buddhism, and other religions should be, not simply as another familiar Christian denomination often wrongly seen as akin to Catholicism.

Let me get specific with a few examples.

First, one of our Orthodox Christian inmates at Muncy, where there had not been an Orthodox chaplain or priest for quite some time, asked me if it was ok for her to continue leading prayers at Protestant services because there were no regular Orthodox services yet, although we have started Orthodox prayer and study gatherings I said no. We follow Orthodox canons that prohibit Orthodox Christians from participating in worship and prayer with non-Orthodox. This is not to be snobby but to try to maintain boundaries that got blurred historically in histories of conquests and colonialism as mentioned, and most fundamentally because the Orthodox Church is the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” Quiet meditative prayer is also important for Orthodox Christians, including saying the Jesus Prayer, often silently: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”

Another inmate for years had been participating in Catholic services at Muncy but considered herself an Orthodox Christian. She had changed her designation to Catholic but when I began coming as a priest, she asked to be reinstated as Orthodox so to speak. We could not find her baptismal documents from when she was a baby, so we gave her a conditional baptism at Muncy (in which it was stated it was conditional on her not having been baptized before) through triple immersion. So she is no longer taking Catholic communion Now I do bring her communion in a kit usually used for the sick (for those not able to attend Church), until we can start a Liturgy service.

Besides such issues of prayers and communion, there is fasting. Orthodox Christians have a complex and rich fasting cycle throughout the year. Often this is not recognized alongside Islamic and Jewish fasting needs. Basically, Orthodox fasting involves a menu of vegan food plus shellfish. This is something good even to keep in mind for chaplain conferences like this, which on a Wednesday is a fasting day for us. Wednesdays, Fridays, and a few major feasts especially Lent, in addition to preparation for communion, can keep Orthodox Christians on a fasting menu for half the year.

A couple other tips about the care and feeding of Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Church, like the US military and like SCI, has its own hierarchy. So while at Muncy Chaplain Almasy my Orthodox colleague is a full-time SCI staff chaplain, to me as a priest he is also Subdeacon Herman in the Orthodox Church. A priest can give special blessings, and spiritually is director. But at the same time there obvious are requirements that I must meet in any SCI facility and at Muncy in particular. Sensitivity though to cultural hierarchy issues can help in dealing with Orthodox volunteers who are clergy. If you have questions, just ask.

Another issue is the calendar. Most of the Orthodox Christians in the world, in other countries, are on what I call simply the Church calendar. This is the Julian calendar. You can think of it as like the Jewish sacred calendar. However, in North America, most Orthodox Christians are on what I call the civil calendar, which is the Gregorian calendar. These are also sometimes called the old calendar and the new calendar. So it’s good to bear in mind that for special feasts such as Christmas, your Orthodox inmates and volunteer and staff clergy may be on different calendars, although our Easter or Pascha is the same. We usually can resolve such differences amicably by recognizing both calendars, but again it is another way that Orthodoxy is different for sure.

Finally, I’ll recommend a movie to you that just came out this spring, called “Moses the Black.” It’s available on Amazon Prime and probably elsewhere too. The film Moses the Black will help give you a dramatized sense of how Orthodoxy is different although sharing of course many aspects of Christian tradition. It is a movie about a gang leader in Chicago whose grandmother puts him in touch with the tradition of a fifth-century Egyptian saint named Moses the Black, who was a gang leader who gave up violence to become a monk in the desert. Again, I recommend this film Moses the Black to you because it will give some insights into Orthodoxy, why Orthodoxy is different, and in fictional form how it can interact with criminal and prison situations.

To wrap up, at Muncy with the help of Chaplain Adam and Subdeacon Herman, I conduct a catechumen class (currently going over the Nicene Creed), and also a book discussion about The Brothers Karamazov combined with prayer and Bible Study. We have about five inmates in the Catechumen Class, and about a dozen up to 15 sometimes in the larger overlapping group. We also have a couple folks from our parish who are in the process of getting clearances as volunteers, and an Orthodox student from Bucknell university where I teach who is with me today, who is here today.

Remember that Orthodox Christianity has long and deep interactions with prisoners and prisons around the world, related to Matthew 25, as can be found  famously in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Fyodor Dostoevsky. And Orthodoxy is growing in America due to conversions and immigration from a variety of lands, so you may likely be seeing it more, even though it remains a minority religion in the U.S.

In conclusion, please feel free to contact me as an Orthodox priest who can be a resource for you and help with contacting Orthodox parishes in your area.  You can find me online through Bucknell University under Orthodox Christian chaplain. I also have cards with contact info here I’ll pass out. Thank you! Glory to God!

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church for the Afterfeast of the Dormition, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

In today’s Gospel we hear from our Lord how the prophecy is fulfilled in Him that  ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.” Yet this is also tied together with the prophecy in Daniel about the “stone cut out of a mountain without hands,” which fortells our Lord being born from the Virgin Mary without human seed, yet fully God and fully man.

This is the secret hidden in the ages, the leaven at work, and the Summer Pascha, the Dormition is the season most exemplifying the hidden beauty of this. For the Byzantines wrote a hymn of how the Wise Thief recognized the hidden God on the Cross, and on this flower feast we are reminded of the hidden beauty of our Mother in the Church who is also His Mother, the Mother of God.

This is sometimes called the tlower feast, for at the Dormiton we bless flowers, fragrant herbs, and seeds. We’ve also this Dormition season blessed according to Church Tradition honey, fruit, water, commemorated the Holy Woods of the Trees of the Cross, and yesterday nuts, grains and bread.

But the Dormition is most of all the flower feast. That reminds us of a little open secret of biblical language. The word Logos in biblical Greek means not only the Word, as a name for Christ, but also harmony. And thus the Word of God is also the Harmony of God, and involves beauty as well.

At the end of the Paraklesis service sung during the Dormition season is the question: “How do you nurse the Master?” That sums up the hidden beauty of the Theotokos and her Son who is also the Son of God, the Son of the Most Holy Trinity. Her womb contained the Creator, fully God and fully man. And as St. John Chrysostom points out, our Lord “had concern also over the honor of His mother, but much more over the salvation of Her soul and the good of men, for which He had become clothed in the flesh” (Commentary on John, Homily 21). In other words, He specially cared for her, as on the Cross, but He also saw the need to lead her to salvation as her Savior as well.

At the time of this flower feast of the Theotokos I am reminded of an encounter from my childhood with a sense of hidden beauty. My grandfather grew up on a farm inside what became the city of Chicago. In his old age, when I was young, he would come over to our house and help us with gardening. As a child I became very taken with gardening by his example and influence, and also because I had had tuberculosis and was out of school and away from other children for a long while, and it was a way to feel connected. During that time I also became a dedicated reader, and I discovered an interest in the Byzantine empire strangely, which God used over time to help bring me to Orthodoxy despite my sinfulness, but I also discovered something about the hidden beauty of God’s creation in the garden.

The mysterious way in which seeds fall into the ground, in a sense die as the Bible puts it, and then come to life and unfold into something amazingly great, like the biblical mustard tree. Yet all this occurred in a hidden way for me in the sense that it was in a garden in our inner-city backyard that was a place where a rabbit lived and raspberries ran wild with lilies of the valley, which somehow was separate from the city around us yet even more real than worldliness. While I at first loved planting vegetables and berry bushes because I was fascinated by how they could grow food from the earth, my grandfather most of all loved flowers. He taught me the value of beauty from God’s creation, which our Lord noted in His Sermon on the Mount when he said, behold the lilies how they grow, clad in a glory that kings never know. Experiencing this as I did as a child close up as it were with my grandfather’s influence, I could never subscribe to what the Irish Orthodox write Paul Kingsnorth criticized in his visit to Lewisburg as the global Machine, a sense in which a new religion of technology is sweeping us all up to ignore the miracle and mystery of Creation that the Church celebrates this time of year in our Dormition services.

The birth and death of the Theotokos in Orthodox tradition, unlike Catholicism, are fully natural, yet they also personify the mystery of hidden music in God’s creation and in His sustaining care for us, even to the point of sending His only begotten Son to save us, emerging from her womb. The beauty of the feast is seen in the distinctive icon of the Dormition, with Jesus holding His mother’s pure soul in the form of a baby, while the Apostles are gathered miraculously around her at her passing. Perhaps we as Orthodox Christians may take the beauty of this icon for granted, but hopefully not, for it is such beauty that brought us to Orthodoxy in the first place, and which continues to bring converts today. I have told many of you of a good friend of mine who is a retired college professor who in years of teaching brough around 15 students into the Orthodox Church. He told me he did so not by arguing about religion or about religious-related culture war topics such as gay marriage or abortion with them. He said he simply strove to show them the beauty of Orthodoxy. Then, whatever their worldly views before, as they came into Orthodoxy, those views change and melded into the outlook of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Beauty will save the world, a character in Dostoevsky says, and when the ambassadors of St. Vladimir the Great returned to him from Constantinople it was the beauty of the Orthodox service they described that led to the conversion of what would become Russia.

This holy day has hidden beauty in another way too: It’s not in the Bible. But it comes from Church Tradition that includes the Bible, and is in accord with the Bible..  It highlights how the Virgin Mary was fully human but also how she became divinized in theosis. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, our little country mission’s patron, explained how she fully bloomed in beauty following her death in her resurrection in ways we still on earth cannot fully comprehend yet cannot ignore and which are the source of our delight in this feast of joyful sorrow commemorating her death and resurrection.

St. John writes, 

The end of the earthly life of the Most Holy Mother of God was the beginning of Her greatness. “Being adorned with Divine glory” (Irmos of the Canon of the Dormition), She stands and will stand, both in the day of the Last Judgment and in the future age, at the right hand of the throne of Her Son. She reigns with Him and has boldness towards Him as His Mother according to the flesh, and as one in spirit with Him, as one Who performed the will of God and instructed others (Matt. 5:19). Merciful and full of love, She manifests Her love towards Her Son and God in love for the human race. She intercedes for it before the Merciful One, and going about the earth, She helps men. Having experienced all the difficulties of earthly life, the Intercessor of the Christian race sees every tear, hears every groan and entreaty directed to Her. Especially near to Her are those who labor in the battle with the passions and are zealous for a God-pleasing life. But even in worldly cares She is an irreplaceable helper. “Joy of all who sorrow and intercessor for the offended, feeder of the hungry, consolation of travellers, harbor of the storm-tossed, visitation of the sick, protection and intercessor for the infirm, staff of old age, Thou art the Mother of God on high, O Most Pure One” (Sticheron of the Service to the Hodigitria). “The hope and intercession and refuge of Christians,” “The Mother of God unceasing in prayers” (Kontakion of the Dormition), “saving the world by Thine unceasing prayer” (Theotokion of the Third Tone). “She day and night doth pray for us, and the scepters of kingdoms are confirmed by Her prayers” (daily Midnight Service).

This reminds us again of the hidden beauty, hidden to the world, of this flower feast. Our Lord said, “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” The Venerable Bede in Anglo-Saxon Orthodox England wrote of how the white lily was the emblem of the Virgin Mary, with the white petals symbolizing her purity, and the golden anthers representing in effect the uncreated light radiant from her in her theosis at the Dormition. The Song of Songs in the Bible, which the Church tells us needs be read as an allegory for the love of Christ for His Church, says, “as a rose among thorns, so is my love among the daughers.” The Virgin Mary as the dwelling place or tabernacle of the Lord is also closely identified with the Church, as in the center point of the Book of Revelation. 

Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice in this feast as the old Church year draws to a close, with the death of the last of the prophets John the Forerunner wrapping it up soon in two short weks. Across the horizon of the new Church year will come the Nativity of the Theotokos. And so the hidden beauty of the Church herself, not known to the world, will unfold again across the year and carry us through all the events of salvation, from the birth of a baby in a manger at Bethlehem to His death on a Cross with his mourning mother, and the joy at His Resurrection that carried her from Pascha to Pentecost and beyond to the Dormition we celebrate today, when she became the Mother of us all.

Most Holy Theotokos save us! Joyous Feast!

****

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§87 [21:33-42]

The Lord said this parable: ‘There was a certain householder who planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen and went into a far country. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, ‘They will reverence my son.’ But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.’ And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard and slew him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?’ They said unto Him, ‘He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, who shall render him the fruits in their seasons.’ Jesus said unto them, ‘Did ye never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’’? 

(Above) One of our young worshippers at the Feast of the Dormition at St. John’s, where we honored the Mother of our God and of us all in the Church, and following Orthodox Christian tradition also bless flowers, fragrant herbs, and seeds.
(Bel0w) An homily from St. John’s for the Dormition of our Most Holy Theotokos, by Priest Paul Siewers.

The Dormition, the falling asleep of the Most Holy Mother of God, also known as the Summer Pascha, is a time of reflection and renewal, of transition and passing in the Church year–

–From the old towards the new Church year

–From the summer towards the winter

–Looking ahead to the death of the last Old Testament Prophet John soon, and to our Lady’s Nativity in the new year

–And ultimately toward the birth of her Son our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ in high winter, the ultimate tidings of comfort and joy.

Dormition means falling-asleep, a term we use when we express the hope that the faithful have fallen asleep in the Lord, as did our brother John this spring when we laid him to rest as the first Orthodox Christian burial in our Churchyard at St. John’s.

Our Lady’s falling asleep is a source of hope because:

–As the greatest of saints yet fully human in her birth and death, she exemplifies the way for us of theosis or oneness with the uncreated grace of God. 

–As she bore in her womb our Lord and gave him in that way His fully human nature, as He is fully God and fully man, so she also is always special in her identification with the Church, the Body of Christ. She is herself the fulfillment of the Old Testament tabernacle or dwelling of God, as exemplified also in her childhood in the Temple’s Holy of Holies.

–In her passing she also even more becomes our intercessor. For according to Church Tradition, even as our Lord and her Son took her soul up to heaven at the time of her passing, pictured in the icon before us as him taking her soul like a baby, so too her tomb was found empty after three days, like our Lord’s. Her Resurrection was in heaven, where her body and soul were reunited, the first such Resurrection before our Lord’s Second Coming. She dwells not only in Paradise the hope of the righteous before the Second Coming, but in heaven with our Lord where she intercedes for us.

At this time of her translation, we also are reminded through her of all the gifts that God has given to us, in this ancient season of Thanksgiving in the Orthodox Church. As the Priest says in the Liturgy of the Holy Gifts, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all!” Like the Theotokos, we are reminded most of all to offer ourselves to Him, while we have been giving thanks during the Dormition season by blessing water, remembering the Holy Wood and origins of the Trees of the Cross, blessing honey and fruits and today flowers and fragrant herbage and seeds, and tomorrow for the After-Feast nuts, grains, and bread.

In the New Testament temple we bring ourselves as the unworthy offerings in hopes that, with the uncreated energies of God we also celebrated during the Dormition season at Transfiguration, we may follow the example of the Theotokos and with her intercessions be translated unworthily following her at the time of the Final Judgment. “Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest,” our Lord promised. And the Dormition is a reminder, an example, a foretaste, and a promise of that rest to us all. Most Holy Theotokos save us!

I conclude with some words from our Father among the saints Ignatius Branchaninov, who wrote a beautiful commentary on the Life of the Mother of God. Here are a few selections from its ending.

“After the ascension of the Lord, the Mother of God, as we see from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, was inseparable from the apostles and lived in the same house, in constant prayer. The holy Evangelist Luke calls these prayers “prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14), showing that all the activities of the Mother of God and of the apostles were focused on various modes of prayer, and that all their time was dedicated to prayer. It was in the context of this practice and way of life that the Holy Spirit came down upon the Lord’s disciples on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1), for the Holy Spirit always requires a disciple of Christ to prepare himself with the most intensive, constant prayer, before coming down upon him and overshadowing him. On this day, then, the Mother of God received the most abundant gift of the Holy Spirit, enlightening not only her soul but also her body. Her soul and her body themselves became sources of light. The Holy Spirit testifies to this. The holy Church bears witness to it. Spiritual reason affirms it.

“For those who wish to hear historical testimony, we recommend here the account of the Mother of God written by her contemporary in earthly life, St Dionysius the Areopagite, a well-known and learned Athenian, who was converted to Christianity by the holy Apostle Paul (Acts 17:34). Three years after the Areopagite had first believed in the Redeemer, he visited the Mother of God, who since the Lord’s ascension had been living permanently in Jerusalem in the house of the evangelist John. We quote the following from the letter of St Dionysius to the Apostle Paul: 

‘It seemed incredible to me, confessing before God, O our excellent leader and shepherd, that apart from God Himself on high there should be anyone filled with divine power and wondrous grace; no man can attain what I saw and comprehended not only with the eyes of my soul but with my bodily eyes. I saw with my own eyes the godlike Mother, holier than all the powers of heaven, of Christ Jesus, our Lord, whom I was granted to see through the grace of God, the condescension of the supreme apostle (John) and the unspeakable goodness and mercy of the most merciful Virgin. Again and again I confess before the might of God, before the grace of the Saviour and before the glorious honour of the Virgin, His Mother, that when I was brought before the face of the godlike, most holy Virgin by John, the head of the evangelists and prophets, who, living in the flesh, shines like the sun in the heavens, then there shone before me such a great and boundless radiance, not only outside but even more brightly from within, and I was filled with such a wondrous and varied fragrance that neither my weak body nor my soul could endure such and so many signs and elements of eternal blessedness and glory: my heart grew faint, my spirit grew faint within me from her divine glory and grace. I bear witness before God, Who dwelt in the most honourable womb of the Virgin, that if I had not remembered in my newly-illumined mind your divine teaching and commandments, then I would have confessed the Virgin to be God, and would have honoured her with the veneration befitting the one true God: because the mind cannot imagine greater honour and glory for a person glorified by God, than the blessedness that I, the unworthy, was granted to experience, being then entirely blessed and happy. I give thanks to my most good God on high, to the divine Virgin, to the excellent apostle John, and also to you, the highest and most solemn leader of the Church, who mercifully granted me such a blessing.’

“The Mother of God possessed in even greater abundance the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit in which the apostles abounded. She had not only the gift of prophecy but also that of spiritual discernment and of wonderworking, and countless other gifts known to herself and to the Giver of these gifts. Incurable diseases were cured when their sufferers touched her. Her virgin body, sanctified by God, became a vessel and source of miracles. Just as the image of the Apostle Peter made on the ground by his shadow performed miracles (Acts 5:15), so the icons of the Mother of God to this day perform miracles across the earth preaching, bearing witness, and sealing with signs the truth of Christ’s teaching. The rays of the sun were the painters of the miraculous images of the Apostle. The apostles and the holy saints were the painters of the spiritual rays of the Sun of righteousness, of God and the Son of the Ever-Virgin, the wonderworking icons of the Mother of God. On the third day after her blessed dormition, the Mother of God rose from the dead, and she now dwells in the heavens in soul and in body. She not only dwells in the heavens: she reigns there. As the Mother of the Heavenly King, she has been proclaimed the heavenly Queen, and Queen of the holy angels and of holy people. She has been granted special power and special boldness in intercession before God on behalf of humanity. The holy Church, turning with requests to all the greatest saints of God, to all the angels and archangels, says to them: “Pray to God for us.” Only to the Mother of God does the Church use the words “save us.” The Mother of God is the greatest intercessor and helper of all those who labor to please God, and of all those who have dedicated their earthly life to serving God. When she appeared to a certain holy monk, she healed him from a grave illness and said that he belonged to her family. She is a quick consolation to those who mourn and weep. She speaks for those who repent; she is a true refuge for sinners who wish to return to God; she is a fervent intercessor for them before God. 

“Standing before the Mother of God, in deep reverence toward her greatness, in solemn bewilderment and astonishment, in the joy of faith and love, the children of the Orthodox Church bring to the Ever-Virgin the most joyful doxology. Accept, Lady, these infant voices, this infant prattling, attempting out of fervor of heart to define your greatness, and unable to do so from weakness of reason, from lack of words, from your boundless greatness. 

“Hail, tabernacle of God the Word! Hail, Holy of Holies! Hail, throne of the Almighty! Hail, enclosure of the God whom nothing can enclose! Hail, most holy chariot of Him who rides upon the cherubim! Hail, best of all dwellings for Him who is above the seraphim! Hail, height hard to climb for the thoughts of men! Hail, depth hard to scan even for the eyes of angels! Hail, tidings doubted by unbelievers! Hail, undoubted glory of the faithful! Hail, for thou provest devoid of reason those skilled in reason’s art! Hail, for the cunning disputants are shown to be fools! Hail, for thou hast torn asunder the tangled webs of the Athenians! Hail for thou hast filled (with spiritual knowledge) the nets (of faith) of the fishermen! Most holy Birthgiver of God! Glory to you! Most holy Birthgiver of God, save us! Amen.”

With all that, the Theotokos also remains for each of us our Mother in the Church.

Most holy Theotokos save us! Joyous Feast!

(Quotation from The Harvest: Spiritual Nourishment for the Church Year, Holy Trinity Publications)

A sermon for the Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost, the Afterfeast of Transfiguration and the Feast of the Holy Martyr Laurence, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today we commemorate the memory of Saint Laurence of Rome, who was martyred in 258 AD. Orthodox icons of him sometimes show him holding the gridiron or grate on which he was burned to death. He refused to give up information against Christianity to the authorities. According to tradition, he said, while being burned alive on the grate,  “I’m done on this side! Turn me over and eat!”

This was one of two remarks for which the Archdeacon of Rome is especially remembered. The other occurred earlier, when pagan officials persecuting Christians tried to force him to lead them to the church treasury in Rome, to take all her money for the government. St. Laurence led them to a hall filled with poor and crippled and sick people, and said, “these are our treasure.”

Archdeacon Laurence could have been tempted by survival, by comfort, by riches, by conforming to power in hopes of power, or all of the above–or by thinking his work was so important he needed to conform and thus be spared. But he did not entertain such temptations. He acted in the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching in today’s Gospel reading (see text at the end below), by standing for his faith against all temptations to compromise.

Our Lord Jesus in the Gospel today shocked the young man by telling him that although he obeyed the commandments of God he still needed to give all his worldly riches to the poor.  That answer inspired monastics like St. Anthony the Great throughout Orthodox history. It was a challenge to martyrdom or witness then, and is a challenge to those of us Orthodox Christians living in the world in 2026. Consider how in our modern culture to dispense with worldly riches on any small to large level would be considered by many devoted to materialism and careerism to be a kind of death.

Jesus’s command follows His New Commandment, to love one another as I have loved you. Orthodox teachers on Scripture relate this to the message to the Church of Ephesus in Revelation. It called that Church back to its first love in the sense of the spirit of the apostolic Church, when people did not keep their worldly riches, but gave them to each other to meet the needs of others.

This involves emptying ourselves in Christ rather than asserting ourselves. In today’s world of economics and careers and professionalism and so forth, that is a kind of martyrdom, too, whether unto physical or social death. But remember that all of us will die anyway.

The result of self-emptying in Christ, note the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, is a sweetness in life and a true freedom that is always with us no matter what we encounter each day.

Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov memorably noted this, in a novel that presented Orthodox teaching to a global laudience. The real-life St. Paisius the Elder in the last century did, too, explaining how the less we have in the way of possessions, the less stress we have in our life as Christians.

How can we accomplish this? Partly through the Jesus Prayer. That simple prayer said continually, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me,” challenges us to surrender in humility our false sense of self, to lose our self in Christ.

There are other things we can do, such as saying an Akathist daily, reading a chapter from the Gospel daily, and challenging ourselves each day to meet the discipline of fasting, including confession and alms-giving and making it to Church including for Vigil and mid-week major feast days, no matter what else is going on. Such a framework for our daily lives is a type of spiritual self-care that also leads to loving others more than our self. That’s because it leads us to empty ourselves in Christ as a martyr or witness, as did St. Laurence.

The paradox is that this is indeed spiritual self-care. to love our neighbor as our self or, following our Lord’s New Commandment, more than oru self. For, as the Bible commands, we first have to love Christ with all our heart, mind, strength, soul—in other words, we need to empty ourself in Him. So, we love ourself in the truest way as we love Christ. Then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is to love him as we love Christ. And to love him more than our self, according to His New Commandment, well that is a glimpse in our experience of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of the love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That is the core source and ultimate essence of a reality that lies beyond our conceptualizing.

To follow St. Laurence in witness, without tempting God but with a desire to bear witness without compromising our faith in our Lord, is not just sentimental idealism, but a form of spiritual warfare. 

In St. Laurence’s case, such warfare meant not giving in to the temptation that to divulge information about Church members or the Church treasury used to help support the poor and mission work, would just be a worldly matter that wouldn’t matter spiritually. He in effect waged a spiritual war to protect the vulnerable of the Church, as a necessary war, so to speak.

There can be different dimensions to necessary war, from the interior to the external, local to global. But all necessary warfare in a spiritual sense requires us to partake deeply with God’s help of humility and repentance, even as martyrs or confessors, confessors being those martyrs who face persecution without death. The mystery of confession is a necessity in all such warfare.

The Orthodox Christian Tradition distinguishes between necessary and just war. It does not see war as ever just as do Protestants and Catholics often. There are no Orthodox Crusades. But Orthodox Christians sometimes see warfare as necessary, a necessary evil, and thus right but not righteous, as the Orthodox philosopher Ivan Ilyin put it (or even, controversially, in a certain sense a holy war but not a righteous or just war–the words for righteousness and justice incidentally being related in biblical Greek).

That’s why St. Laurence took a stand in what was spiritually a necessary war. He did not compromise. The devil could have tempted the Holy Archdeacon: “Don’t lead the pagan Roman authorities into sin, just divulge the information they seek, it is only worldly information that belongs to Caesar and not Christ, and you want to be able to continue in your spiritual work.” Turn the other cheek, the tempter would say, twisting words from the Gospel. But to give in would have endangered the vulnerable, St. Laurence’s fellow believers, the local Church in Rome, and would have been a denial of Christ and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Such immoral compromise sadly is a way of life today in the most acceptable way. A friend of mine at a top university says that people in graduate school won’t go against false authorities to stand for truth because they fear for their careers. Then they become professors and won’t speak up because they want to get tenure. Then the same thing with getting promoted to full professor. Then the same thing for getting grants and higher-paying administrative positions and emeriti status. Then they retire and then he says they are dead, without ever standing for truth. This is true in other walks of life today in different forms, as well. The same is seen in a lack of real spiritual conviction about all manner of moral challenges in our decadent society today.

The Orthodox writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted after years in communist prison camps (amid the numerically greatest world persecution of Christians under Communism) that the line between good and evil is not between political parties or types of people, but the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. That’s where necessary spiritual warfare as practiced by St. Laurence must originate, involving continual repentance and humility and the mystery of confession, but also unyielding obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ — the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in devotion to His Church, the Body of Christ. This involves not blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. 

The early 19^th century Anglican writer Reginald Heber fell in love with an Orthodox Pascha service that he witnessed in Russia. He wrote a famous English hymn related to spiritually necessary warfare. It includes these verses that can remind us of St. Laurence as well as the dilemma facing the rich young man in the Gospel, and all of us who today hear the Holy Gospel and reflect the Life of St. Laurence.:

A glorious band, the chosen few
On whom the Spirit came;
[The] valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their heads the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?

A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
Through peril, toil and pain;
O God, to us may grace be given,
To follow in their train.

Holy Martyr Laurence, pray to God for our mission! And Glory to Jesus Christ!

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            The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§79 [19:16-26]

At that time, a young man came and said unto Jesus, bowing unto Him and said: ‘Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?’ And He said unto him, ‘Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into Life, keep the commandments.’ He said unto Him, ‘Which?’ Jesus said, ‘‘Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’’ The young man said unto Him, ‘All these things have I kept from my youth up. What lack I yet?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow Me.’ But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, ‘Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.’ When His disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But Jesus beheld them and said unto them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ 

+++

(Fyi, Heber’s hymn quoted above was made famous in the fictional film The Man Who Would be King, an anthem there of outlaw heroism, based on its use in an earlier story by Rudyard Kipling. But in real life it was the favorite hymn of Gen. George Patton, and sung at his funeral.)

A homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers, for Theophany 7534/2026.

If you wish to transfigure your life, this is the holiday for you. For today on Mount Tabor our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ has shown forth the pattern of Transfiguration, just as more than 1,500 years before he had shown the pattern of the tabernacle to Moses on Mount Sinai. Today’s holiday is for us as Christians, to help us realize how in Christ we may fulfill our life in Him and our body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, in the Church, the Bod f Christ.

St. Gregory Palamas fought a long and sometimes lonely battle in the 14^th century to preserve the sacredness of this message, this pattern on the mount, for us as Orthodox Christians, when the Scholasticism or academic approach of the heterodox West threatened to erase it. For the Orthodox Church alone preserves the full teaching of Christianity on the uncreated light of God manifest in the Transfiguration, when Jesus Christ appeared full of that uncreated grace shining before his closest apostles, Peter, James and John, while conversing with the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, who had left this year many centuries before.

St. Gregory Palamas wrote that what was revealed in the Transfiguration was the purpose of our lives, that is theosis, or oneness with the uncreated energy or light of God. St. Gregory wrote: 

“So when the saints contemplate this divine light within themselves, seeing it by the divinizing communion of the Spirit, through the mysterious visitations of perfecting illuminations—then they behold the garment of their deification, their mind being glorified and filled by the grace of the Word, beautiful beyond measure in His splendor; just as the divinity of the Word on the mountain glorified with divine light the body conjoined to it. For the glory which the Father gave Him, He Himself has given to those obedient to Him, as the Gospel says, and He willed that they would be with Him and contemplate His glory.” (p. 33, Triads, Paulist Press)

The Transfiguration occurred 40 days before the Crucifixion to assure the Apostles of Jesus’ Divinity and inspire their faith in the Resurrection to come. This is why today’s Feast is 40 days before the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross coming up in the new  Church year. It was moved from Great Lent by the early Church because the Transfiguration was too joyous and glorious for that season, and instead it was placed at the time of harvest and during the Dormition Fast, pointing toward the Exaltation of the Cross. Originally, the Transfiguration in the Gospel was associated with the Festival of Booths or tabernacles, based in Old Testament worship commemorating the 40-year wandering of Israel in the desert. 

In the Gospels the Church everywhere become the tabernacle, and the people each a temple in their body so to speak. It was said of our patron St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco that, “A prayer of supplication was sung after which Vladyka, standing before a lectern, was delivering a sermon. I was standing next to my mother, and we both saw light surrounding Vladyka down to the lectern—a radiance around him a foot wide. This lasted a rather long time. When the sermon was over, I was struck by such an unusual phenomenon. I told what we had seen to our friend, who replied to us: ‘Yes, many faithful saw it.’ My husband who was standing a little way off, also saw this light.” (Bishop Alexander Mileant, Life and Miracles)

Mount Tabor itself is located in Galilee not far from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth and from Cana where he turned the water into wine in his first public miracle. As such, it is located outside Judaea proper, and points like the Transfiguration to the Church as Israel for all nations. Galilee was more influenced by Gentile people and trade troutes. The mountain itself symbolizes a practical aspect of the Transfiguration, as St. Nikolai Velimirovich wrote the location on a mountain taught two virtues: “love of labor and godly thoughts—for climbing to the heights requires labor and the heights themselves represent the elevation of our thoughts t the things of God” (pp. 148-149, Prologue of Ohrid, vol. 2, 2002))

Our founding first hierarch of ROCOR, Metropolitan Antony, adds to this that “The prayers sung in Church today explain to us, brothers, that the Lord revealed His divine Transfiguration with the specific goal of persuading His followers that they, too, are to adorn their inner image with virtues and to shine also with external spiritual beauty” (Sermon, 1898).

The Apostles at first reacted by thinking of erecting tabernacles from the Old Testament tradition. But the Transfiguration was for us all, in the sense that the Theotokos, the greatest of human saints, having fulfilled the tabernacle in becoming the Mother of God, and the Body of Christ which she bore becoming the Church, in which we all are joined.

The uncreated light energizes this whole, the mystical unity given by God that sustains us in His Providence, what in Slavonic is called sobornost.

Jesus said “I am the light of the world,” of which we sing in the ancient Vespers Hymn “O Gentle Light,” and from that He also said to his disciples, and to us really, “You are the light of the world.” The Transfiguration illustrated this for the apostles and for us as hearers of the Gospels.

The pre-revolutionary Russian Abbess Thaisia wrote of her own experience, “I saw myself in some other world—in heaven, as I thought. An ineffable sweetness filled my soul. Everything was so full of light, so wonderfully beautiful” (p. 40, Autobiography). And of course we have the famous account given by Motovilov of his experience with St. Seraphim of Sarov of the uncreated light.

Sometimes today is called the Summer Theophany, because at the Transfiguration the Holy Trinity again was revealed, as it had been early in Jesus public career, now near the end. The Father’s voice was heard, Christ the Son revealed in the light that comes also from the Trinity as a whole, and the Holy Spirit’s presence seen in the cloud. Even to this day, tradition records a cloud that appears over Mount Tabor yearly above the Orthodox Christian monastery there on Transfiguration.

Finally I acknowledge my debt for most of the quotations about Transfiguration today to the study booklet Climbing Your Mount Tabor, a copy of which I picked up on Monday at Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary in Jordanville. It is now in our library, I highly recommend borrowing it for family or individual study, and when I post a copy of this homily, I’ll include a link if you’d like to order it.  https://a.co/d/0iGUUxR0

Brothers and sisters, I want to leave you with one final thought as we after the Eucharist will bless the fruit, a yearly tradition. As we bless the fruit, think about how one message from the Feast of Holy Transfiguration is that we are the fruit, as we share in the uncreated light of the Holy Trinity given to us by our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Glory to Him!